A watch purchase on 1-2-3.tv
Grey market watches: The TAG Heuer from the home-shopping stations
At first glance, it is an enticing offer: a new TAG Heuer Calibre S Regatta at a price of 1666,88 Euros including shipping costs in the online shop of 1-2-3.tv. If you order the watch , you must pay in advance if you are ordering for the first time. In the case of the order on hand of a customer, a period of tense waiting started first after the confirmation of the payment receipt. It took 9 days to receive the watch. Probably the watch was not on stock and had to be procured first.
But the delivery convinced at first. The package contained – as promised by 1-2-3.tv - a new TAG Heuer Calibre S Regatta in the original Tag Heuer watch box with the worldwide valid guarantee card and the service booklet in a noble leather case and the certificate. Negative for the customer is only the circumstance that the luxury watch delivered is not a watch delivered by a German concessionaire, but a watch from Slovakia. The guarantee card is stamped by a dealer in Bratislava. No word about that in the offer on 1-2-3.tv. But what are the consequences of this seemingly unimportant detail?
Guarantee in Germany: Three question marks!
As to how far the guarantee claims of German customers are granted in Germany by TAG Heuer resp. can be enforced remains open. TAG Heuer gives no statement to the inquiry by TrustedWatch and 1-2-3.tv states via telephone that the watch has to be sent in to 1-2-3.tv in case of guarantee claims. How the guarantee is handled then and how the service is guaranteed after expiration of the guarantee remains unanswered.
It must not remain unanswered how such grey market watches that are exported into a different country can be procured so much cheaper on the market. The offer of 1-2-3.tv is not a bargain for such a watch. It is also not nice that 1-2-3.tv does not want to reimburse the costs for return shipment at first opposing the legal regulations, and the reimbursement of the purchase price took a very very long time.
Grey market watches: Watch producers in requested
It is understandable that 1-2-3.tv very probably has great interest in decorating its watch offer with such luxury watches, however, watch producers like TAG Heuer are clearly requested to take action here. It cannot be given that watches from dubious grey market channels are offered to unsuspecting customers and TAG Heuer is not able to prohibit this in advance. Here, the watch producer is requested to undertake test purchases and innovative defence measures that are available on the market in order to prevent such grey market offers quickly. That this is possible and works is proven on a daily basis by luxury watch producers whose watches do not or only rarely appear on the grey market. However, this also needs to be a goal for the watch producers in the long run, and not only to look at the short-term sales numbers.